Sommersemester 2010

Urban culture, public space and the state: politics and planning

Are you a student from spatial planning, sociology, architecture, geography, landscape architecture or other space related disciplines like fine arts or political science who is interested in understanding how public spaces work in strategies, plans and policies? Do you question how public spaces are perceived by individuals and collective groups?

Why has public space become that important on the political agenda in Vienna as it seems to be today? Which policies are formulated regarding use and planned interventions of public spaces and how are they translated into planning practice? Which particular role does cultural policy play in this context? And how do policies and planning interventions differ between center and periphery? And why? Where do politicians explicitly formulate design qualities and for whom? How do planners and designers, how social scientists deal with public policies? How are these policies and planning interventions perceived not only by Austrian citizens, but as well by tourists, visitors and those urban dwellers obtaining other nationalities and cultural backgrounds? How – to come back to the indispensible dimension of public spaces – do political programs and planning conceptions affect everyday life routines for different people. Finally, how do policies, plans and strategies help to deal with the current dilemma of urban development between social cohesion and economic competition?

The City of Vienna Visiting Professorship consisting of Junior Professor DI Aglaée Degros (Artgineering, Rotterdam, Know How) and Senior Professor Prof. Ali Madanipour (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK) and the Vienna SKuOR teaching team consisting of Sabine Knierbein, Philipp Krebs (office Raumfilm) and Monika Mokre (Austrian Academy of Sciences) will offer an interdisciplinary set of courses all over the year 2010 (summer and winter term) dealing with these crucial questions from various viewpoints and in different course formats.

We encourage students not only to actively participate in our courses via debates and discussions, but to bring in and develop their personal interests in urban culture and public spaces, in planning and politics. Ideally, you should be in your late bachelor, master or early PhD studies willing to obtain at least 80% of the courses.

We welcome especially those students that want to successfully complete a whole module in summer term and a whole one semester P3 (or equivalent 10 SWS design or elective course) with us.

Nevertheless, all students that just want to visit some of our lectures (VO), lecture-exercises (VU) seminars (SE) or workshops (AG) in a rather flexible manner are highly welcome to partipate as well as we want to foster a stronger exchange between different disciplinary views in a postdisciplinary manner as issues concerning urban culture cannot be understood by mono-disciplinary views, nor can public space.

We offer intercultural discussions as our City of Vienna Visiting Professorship Team brings in a fresh foreign perspectives and our external experts counterbalance this perspective with particular Viennese and Austrian knowledge and viewpoints. Therefore, SKuOR courses are especially addressed to those Austrian students who want to prepare for future job experiences in Europe and beyond, and to all foreign students studying at Vienna University of Technology interested in issues related to urban culture, public space and politics. Students from other Viennese universities can register as ‘Mitbeleger‘ to attend our courses.

Registration for Module 11 courses is only possible by logging onto the VU 280.038 Urban culture and public space – Strategies and interventions of space production „Group 01“ via TUWIS++.

The seminar, the exercise as well as the activities of the two working groups will be conducted in English and German under the auspices of module 11 Special Aspects of Spatial Planning – Urban Culture and Public Space during three-day courses offered by the newly-founded Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR). Students of spatial planning and architecture as well as students from other fields and universities are invited to participate. The working languages are German and (mainly) English. The final contributions and/or examinations can be delivered or taken in one of these two languages, or indeed both languages.

An initial introduction to module 11 takes place on Tuesday, March 4, 2010, from 2 to 4 p.m. in seminar room 268/1, Karlsgasse 13/1, Vienna.

The Module courses themselves will be held in three blocks consisting of 3-day units: